


Personal interests

by Scoby



Series: Reylo experiments [5]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Universe, During Canon, Eventual Armitage Hux / Rose Tico, Eventual Reylo, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force-induced illusion of Kylo Ren / Rose Tico, Jealous Kylo Ren, Jealous Rey (Star Wars), Nice Armitage Hux, Post-TLJ, Roommates Rey & Rose Tico, Rose Tico Deserved Better, Sharing a Bed, Tactical Rey / Armitage Hux, Undercover Rose Tico, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000, legacy lightsaber fixed with legacy tape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25843123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scoby/pseuds/Scoby
Summary: The Force bond starts to activate every night, bringing Kylo Ren to the room where Rey sleeps - in Rose's bed. Rey finds herself unbearably jealous, which gives her a hint about the feelings she still has for him and what she could use to her advantage.-----“We have to go in”, Rose said with a worried look on her face.But Hux grasped gently her wrist before she could reach the door handle.“They’re fine. If I know Kylo Ren at all, he’s just… proposing.”
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Rose Tico, Kylo Ren/Rey, Poe Dameron & Rose Tico, Rey & Rose Tico, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Reylo experiments [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872295
Comments: 9
Kudos: 69
Collections: Ijustfellintothissendhelp





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I love reading and writing about sharing a bed through the Force bond. (My favourites so far are [Pillow talk](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20405317/chapters/48401371), [I'll take it by your side](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13689483) and [Tagged sheets](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24245107).)
> 
> But all that makes me think that if Rey shares a room (which would be probable with the Resistance), there's no guarantee it would be her own bed. So I wondered how she would feel and where it would escalate to. Hope you enjoy and comment if you do :)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You don’t know which tape you’re talking about."

“Which bed do you want?”

“Doesn’t matter much. I can take the one by the door. Once I’ve fixed the lightsaber, I’ll keep it at hand.”

“Who would come here? This base is so well hidden.”

“You never know. They found our previous one.”

“They should give us at least give a moment of peace now. I’m sure they want a break at some point, too.”

Rose threw herself on her back on the bed closer to the small window at the far end of the narrow room. Rey did the same on the other bed closer to the door. Rose lifted her head to look at Rey over her body.

“Oh, this is wrong.”

She took her pillow, moved it to the other end of her bed and put her head down on it again so that it was next to Rey’s.

“I sometimes kick in my sleep. I don’t want to hit your head. Besides, like this we can chat before falling asleep.”

But the first night, they both fell asleep so fast that they did not chat at all.

It started to really seem that the First Order was giving them a break. They kept as heavy a watch as they could with their scarce numbers, and listened to all the comm channels they could hack open, but detected no serious attempts to search for them. The day when the Resistance almost died had caused heavy losses for the First Order, too.

Through the public broadcasts, they heard the announcement of Kylo Ren as the new Supreme Leader, along with the usual propaganda about how the First Order was now stronger than ever to establish peace and order in the galaxy and the encouragements for young and ambitious people from all the worlds to volunteer for their cause.

Since the Resistance’s own publicity team had perished in one of the blown-up transports, Leia herself used many night-time hours putting out their own propaganda, encouraging people to see through the Order’s empty promises and volunteer for the Resistance instead.  
  


* * *

  
Rey assembled the Skywalker lightsaber for what was probably the twentieth time. Trying to gather up bits of hope, she thumbed the ignition. Still nothing.

When she carefully disassembled it again, she saw that the problem was the same as before: no matter how well she got all the parts to align before closing the casing, the kyber crystal had permanently split in two halves that refused to hold together when she handled the thing. She had tried adding all sorts of fillings around the pieces to force them tighter together, but the crystal pieces had either slipped around those or burned them.

“Rey, I didn’t see you at lunch. I brought you some.”

Rose put a tray down on the table next to the broken lightsaber and tools.

“Thanks.” Rey started munching a corner of a protein cube.

“Are you working on that thing again?”

Rey nodded with her mouth full.

“Any progress?”

“I must have the right way to assemble it now. But as long as the kyber crystal is in two halves, it won’t give any power.”

Rose sank into her thoughts looking at the light blue crystal pieces.

“I might know exactly what you need. Just a sec.”

She searched through a supply box by the wall of the makeshift workshop and victoriously lifted up a roll of green tape.

“Try this!”

“Errr, are you suggesting that I fix Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber with _tape_?”

“You don’t know which tape you’re talking about. My mom once patched a broken ore elevator together with this.”

Rose’s gaze dropped slightly down at the memory of her mother. Not wanting to disrespect the legacy of the tape, Rey took the roll from her, cut out a generous piece and wrapped it tightly around the pieces.

She could immediately feel the Force shift around the crystal, turning into one unified swirl instead of the two separate ones that used to never get in sync. Quickly, she assembled the rest of the hilt around the crystal – now a very familiar sequence. When she pressed the ignition now, a bright blue laser blade emerged.

“It did it! I can’t believe this!”

“That’s what people used to say to my mom. And to my grandmother before her.”

That night Kylo Ren returned to Rey’s space. She had already had hopes that their bond was permanently closed after she decided not to join him. She had resolved to consider it as a thing of her past – something that was part of her life when she was still hovering between light and dark. Now that she had chosen light, she did not need anyone trying to pull her back to confusion, least of all Kylo Ren who could be so efficient at it.

But there was his presence, as clearly as before, when Rey blinked her eyes open at night. And when she looked up, she could see him in the light of Ajan Kloss’s two bright moons shining in through the window.

He was fast asleep, head on Rose’s pillow.

Rey sat up to have a closer look. Rose was sleeping on her back, completely unaware of Kylo’s chin against her shoulder. He murmured something in his sleep, snuggled his nose closer to Rose’s neck and breathed deep.

Everything should be fine. As long as Rey did not touch Rose, Kylo would not see her and she would be safe. And as long as Kylo was asleep, Rey would be safe herself. Still, part of her screamed that nothing was fine and wanted to do something: rip Rose and Kylo apart, punch them both, tell Rose that they had to swap beds immediately, anything.

Leia would tell her to breath and search her feelings. Doing that, she just found overwhelming anger that she could not wrap her head around. She tried to explain it to herself as natural rage, brought up by seeing Kylo again, considering everything he had done to the galaxy and how he had tried to twist her into joining all of it, still after he had come so close to turning himself.

For sure, her fury could have nothing to do with Rose, who was among her best friends and who involuntarily and unconsciously happened to be asleep next to the Force-transmitted body of the most attractive person Rey had ever seen. That was not an option because she had decided that he was too evil for her.

Rey laid her head down on her pillow, closed her eyes and focused on feeling the bits of her anger that she was ready to accept. Over time, she drifted into uneasy sleep.  
  


* * *

  
“Still leaking.”

Rose shook her head when she turned on the Falcon’s cooling circuit and saw little droplets creep out of the junction between the cooling liquid tank and the tubing. She turned off the flow and detached the junction again to examine its components.

“I told you. There’s a scratch in the O ring. Like this, there’s no way we can tighten it enough. Maybe with the tape…”

“No!” Rey slammed her hand at the wall, pushed Rose aside, snatched the O ring from her hand and started to reassemble the junction tighter, yelling at Rose as she worked:

“Show some respect! Han would never approve fixing his ship with your tape. There has to be a way to just get it tight enough. And you’re giving up because you don’t care! For you this may be just a ship, but to me and Chewie, it happens to be our only memory of him. And if you have your way, you’ll have tape all over it.”

Rose waited patiently for a moment when she was quiet for a while and spoke in a calm voice:

“No, Rey, you show some respect. This is the third time you snap at me like this today. Let me guess that this is not about the Falcon, or Han, or the tape. There are plenty of places fixed with tape on this ship already. What’s really troubling you?”

Rey took a deeper breath and forced herself to look at Rose, even though her whole face was a painful reminder of seeing her last night, peacefully asleep, cuddled next to… Rey could not allow herself to think about that anymore. Rose had done nothing to deserve this kind of treatment.

Rey strove in her mind to see her just as she was now: her friend who was rightfully insulted, and the best mechanic she knew, who was most probably right about the only way to fix the cooling circuit. Aloud she said:

“Nothing. I’m sorry. Let’s try with the tape."

The following night it happened again. Rey woke up to find the bed next to her crowded with Rose and Kylo. This time, they were facing each other, noses almost touching, so that the tops of their foreheads were overlapping and fusing. In its impossibility, that should remind Rey that this was not really happening – that he was not really here. But instead, it just pulled her attention deeper into the way how their hair combined into a single wide black mop that almost filled Rose’s pillow.

She wondered what would happen if she would grab them both now. If they would become visible to each other, what would happen to the fused tissues? Could they stay like that? Or would their foreheads knock each other out – painfully enough to teach them to stay out of each other’s bodies from now on?

It would still be “safe” to just grab Rose and pull her out of the bed. But again, Rey became painfully aware how her roommate had done nothing to deserve such a treatment.

So she laid down and pinched her eyes shut again. Getting back to sleep took a long time when her jaw kept persistently clenching and her hands tightening into fists.  
  


* * *

  
“General, you wished to speak with me.”

“Yes, Rose, please sit down. Do you want some caf?”

“Mmm, ok.”

Leia poured a steaming cup for Rose from a giant thermos. Before closing the lid, she also dosed another cup for herself and for Poe sitting next to her. Rose sat down across from them and blew on her cup before cautiously sipping.

“First of all, I want you to know that you're doing a great job”, Leia started. “I know that you’re taking care of many invisible tasks on this base that nobody else has time or skill for. Don’t think that it goes unnoticed.”

“Oh, thank you, General.” Rose looked bashfully down.

“And thank you especially for supporting Rey. This is a tough time for her. I’m putting her through some intense training and either that or something else seems to be bringing up a lot.”

“Sure, I can see that.”

“Now, if you’ll accept it, I have a different kind of mission for you.”

“What kind of mission?”

“A secret one. The First Order is recruiting. I could almost say frantically. It looks like they’ve suffered so heavy losses that their normal pipeline of raising children to fill their ranks is not sufficient and they are putting more and more effort into convincing adults to volunteer. One of the skill sets they are looking for is mechanics. We see this as an opportunity to sneak our best mechanic in there under cover.”

“You mean, to gather intel?”

“That’s how it would start. But the main task would be to find out how to cause a major malfunction in a command shuttle.”

“So that it would fail in their next attack?”

“They run thorough checks before attacks. They would spot a malfunction of that level for sure. Your task would be to only cause it for a short while, just enough to ask a high-ranking officer to come with you in the shuttle to check it. That’s why it has to be a serious enough malfunction in a command-level ship for them to care to check on it personally. That’s how we get a valuable hostage.”

“And what would happen once I’d get them in?”

“Poe will fly you away. He’ll be with you all the time, though with a different job to avoid suspicion. He’ll volunteer for sanitation.”

“Why can’t I volunteer as a pilot?” Poe spoke for the first time.

“We’ve been through this, Poe. That would be too risky. Their pilots spend too much time with their superiors without helmets on. And too many people saw you when you were captive. I would prefer to send another pilot but there’s nobody else I can trust to improvise flying a First Order command shuttle. Since it’s got to be you, you need a job where you wear a stormtrooper helmet most of the time. Finn specifically recommended sanitation as the safest choice, if you still remember.”

“He just wants to revenge something by making me clean First Order ‘freshers.”

“I trust Finn’s judgement in this matter. End of discussion. Back to Rose’s task: You’d disable the command shuttle, get a General or Commander in and Poe would take care of the escape. Then we’ll use the hostage to pressure them to surrender. That’s the best we can do with these limited resources when we still can’t pull off a full attack.”

Rose's head was spinning with the details. She felt flattered that the General would consider this important mission for her, but also terribly nervous about disappointing her and essentially the whole movement. As she did not speak, Leia continued:

“It might be dangerous, considering that you’d have to spend a considerable amount of time on a star destroyer, with no guarantee that your real affiliation wouldn’t be discovered. You know our policy. I never force anyone to accept a mission.”

Rose finished her caf and straightened her back.

“I’ll do it, General. My home and whole family are gone. I have nothing to lose. The Resistance is all I have, so I’ll do anything for it. You can count on me.”

Leia smiled and passed Rose a holopad.

“Great to hear that, I admire your courage. Here, you can familiarise yourself beforehand with what we know about First Order tech. It also has holos of all the uniform types. Make sure you learn them by heart so that you recognise everyone’s rank fluently. You have two days.”  
  


* * *

  
When Rey entered their room after evening training, Rose was sitting on her bed with a large hologram open in front of her. She switched it off when she heard the door, but Rey’s eyes had time to register a holo of a star destroyer. Her instinctive first thought was: she’s going to _him_.

“What were you looking at?”

“Just some material for my mission. It’s secret.”

“Secret mission, huh? Be careful not to let your personal interests interfere with direct orders from the General.”

“Personal interests? Seriously? I’m afraid it’s you whose personal interests are getting interfered. What the kriff is your problem, Rey? I have my orders from the General herself to keep my mission secret. What do I do wrong when I follow those?”

Rey contemplated how it would sound if she would just blurt out her thoughts: _What you’re doing wrong is that night after night you’re sleeping with my man. Even though you don’t technically sleep with him because for you he doesn’t exist here. And he’s not really mine because… he just isn’t. But I still can’t watch you sleep next to him and you’re doing it anyways, so that right there is what you do wrong. And now for some reason Leia sends you to him for a "mission". Why you and not me? Has even Leia decided that she prefers you? I hate you._

Instead of letting that out of her mouth, she shut it completely. She washed up and changed her clothes in silence. She refused to respond even when Rose wished her good night.

When Rey woke up that night, Rose was sleeping on her side with her back to Kylo. He was so close that if he would really be here, Rey would surely see his breathing move Rose’s hair. She stirred in her sleep so that her hips moved backwards towards his. Their blankets fused as their bodies settled against each other. Rose let out a muffled _mmm_ sound.

Rey’s familiar anger rose up all over her. She could no more shut her eyes from how furious she was at both of them and why. So she changed her approach. She curled up in her bed and imagined herself in Rose’s place.

And she imagined further how she would actually feel it: the whole solidity and warmth of his body beside hers. Unlike Rose, she would also exist for him, so that he could wrap and arm around her and she would feel its weight. And he could pull her closer until she would be enclosed in a cocoon of his embrace. She would only need to turn her head a little to smell him, and maybe then he would lift his head and kiss…

She fell into more peaceful sleep than she had had in days.  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Not both at the same time. I can’t hear you. Rose, you go first.”

Rose had packed up and the only thing she had said was that she was leaving tomorrow. Nothing about where, but the glimpse Rey had caught of the star destroyer hologram kept looming in her head. Rose sat on her bed, eyes on her backpack, fingering her crescent-shaped medallion. Something about her quiet form struck Rey with a reminder of the possibility that this mission might put her in real danger.

“Are you leaving early?”

“Yes.”

“In case I’m not awake, take care. May the Force be with you.”

Rey hugged her tight, hoping it would undo all her recent hostility and become the last thing that Rose would remember of her.

“With you, too.”

“I’ll miss you”, they both said at the same time and giggled.

Like clockwork, Rey was up at night again, to find Rose and Kylo sleeping on their backs. For once, they looked like neutral, like they could really be just strangers who happened to share a bed due to a simple necessity. Until Rose’s foot came up to standing and she started to push with it on the mattress, about to roll herself over Kylo. Before Rey could stop herself, she said sharply and loud:

“Don’t even think about it.”

Rose dropped back on her back, tilted her head to look up at Rey and asked sleepily:

“What?”

But Kylo had moved faster. He stood next to Rose’s bed with a lightsaber in his hand. Reacting immediately, Rey stood up, ignited her own blade and stared at him in defiant silence. Rose sat up and was the first one to speak:

“Rey, put that down. I don’t know what you’re seeing but there’s no one here.”

Rey switched off her saber, which caused Kylo to follow suit and relax.

“So you’ve fixed our lightsaber.”

“ _My_ lightsaber.”

“I’ll let you use it when you join me”, he said at the same time as Rose asked:

“Rey, who are you talking to?”

Rey sighed in frustration.

“Not both at the same time. I can’t hear you. Rose, you go first.”

Puzzled-looking Rose asked again:

“Who… Who’s there?” She pointed vaguely at the direction where Rey had been looking at.

“I can’t tell you”, she answered quietly.

“Who’s there?” Kylo asked now.

“My roommate.”

“Right there?” he looked down exactly at Rose with unfocused eyes.

“Yes.”

“Did we…?”

“Yes, you’ve snuggled with her every night for weeks.”

“What!?” Rose gasped.

Kylo muttered something quietly, still looking at Rose’s direction, but this time Rey listened to her:

“Is that what’s been bothering you? That I’ve been sleeping next to someone you care about?”

When she quieted down, Rey could here how Kylo finished:

“Is that what’s making you so mad right now?”

Embarrassment washed over her. She stared blankly at the space between both of her roommates and muttered:

“None of your business.”

Rose looked at her sternly in silence, but Kylo shrugged.

“Well, I certainly haven’t done anything, so if you refuse to talk, I’m off back to sleep, if you’ll excuse me.”

He put his knee down on Rose’s bed, about to lay down.

“Stay off her bed!” Rey yelled at him.

“Excuse me!? In case it didn’t occur to you yet, may I point out that from my point of view, this happens to be _my_ bed.”

Rey picked her lightsaber hilt back up, thumb ready on the ignition.

“Fine!” Kylo snorted and bent down to pick up something from underneath Rose’s bed.

A huge, dark metal framed bed appeared, partly fused with Rose’s and partly intersecting the wall, when he lifted up its edge. Dragging the bed, he backed away all the way until his figure disappeared behind the other wall. Only the edge of the frame remained visible and even that disappeared when he let go of it on the other side.

“Good night”, she heard and felt his still agitated presence behind the wall. Before he was fully back to sleep, the bond closed and Rey was left alone with Rose.

“If you tell me who it is, I’ll tell you my secret mission.”

“But… You said it was secret.”

“I trust you won’t tell anyone. Rey, you’ve been such a great friend to me, and I might die on this mission. I don’t want this to stay as the last thing between us.”

Rey agreed with all her heart.

“Ok, tell me.”

“No, you tell me first. Who’s been sleeping with me? And how?”

Rey took a deep breath.

“Kylo Ren. Through the Force. But not on purpose. It's a thing we have. The Force sometimes just throws him in wherever I am.”

Rose startled.

“K-Kylo Ren? Like right here?”

She pointed at the other side of her bed.

“No, closer.”

Rose shuddered.

“And… You’re… jealous of me?”

“No! I mean… I don’t know. I’ve been so confused. I didn’t mean to take it out on you. It just somehow happened. And then you got that mission. You’re going to him, aren’t you?”

“Is that what you’ve been thinking? My dear silly Rey… I’m not going to him. I mean… I’m going to his star destroyer, as an undercover mechanic, but the point is to cause a major technical malfunction to capture a high-ranking officer. And even if I’d meet him by chance… Well… You can trust me to leave him to you. It’s just… a bit hard to see what you see in him. You know what I mean, he’s pretty much the incarnation of everything we’re fighting against.”

“But we don’t win by fighting what we hate but…”

“…by saving what we love, yes. And I’m sure you will, before this is over. If I succeed and we manage to pressure the First Order to surrender, who knows, there might be your chance to save him.”

They hugged and went back to sleep, Rose only for a couple of hours before she sneaked out with Poe into a simple spacecraft that a poor family had insisted on donating as the only thing they were able to do to aid the Resistance. For this purpose, it was perfect. It made them look just like ordinary people coming to volunteer for the First Order. On the way, they did a final practice run of the cover story they were about to give in the interviews.  
  


* * *

  
Rose and Poe slept at the opposite sides of a giant room filled with bunk beds and the nightly sounds of stormtroopers and other low-ranking First Order crew. There was so little privacy that Rose had to sit fully inside her blanket, forming it into a tent around her so that she could look at the technical holograms she got from Leia and work on correcting and completing them according to what she was learning during her daily tasks.

At first, she was afraid of raising too much suspicion. But then she noticed that the other volunteers were doing just the same arrangement for their own blankets in the evenings. Most of the stormtroopers did not bother – they had been raised to complete absence of privacy. But those who had arrived here as adults still desired some form of personal space to look at their own holograms, comm home, or whatever each may choose to do alone.

That night, when Rose browsed through her holos, she reckoned she was ready. The details of every ship type had been completed. She had made several carefully encrypted transmissions to the Resistance as she worked, and the updated technical details had already been helpful for them to do minor damage like stealing supplies and intervening in minor raids.

She opened the holo of the command shuttle she had selected and went through her plan once more. Then, she shut down the holoviewer, walked through the room to the ‘fresher and, on the way, dropped discretely a bolt on Poe’s bed, as a sign that they were ready to go tomorrow.

When Poe’s armoured figure settled down in the cockpit, Rose opened the panel covering the connectors for the signals between the command shuttle and its subordinate ships. With confident movements, she switched the directions. The shuttle turned blank apart from a single error message on the cockpit screen:

_ALL CONTROLS OVERRIDEN_

Then she headed out to the hangar.

She let the stormtroopers, Lieutenants and Captains pass. If nothing else worked, Captain would be the lowest she could settle for, but her target was higher. After a while of waiting, her heart jumped to her throat when she saw who entered the hangar: Kylo Ren himself.

Rose thought about hiding back in the shuttle or in one of the corridors starting nearby. But then she saw that he was accompanied by somebody – somebody in a General’s uniform. This kind of opportunity she could not let pass.

When they drew closer, she even recognised the General. She had never met him, but his face was familiar to everyone in the galaxy. She waved almost enthusiastically when they were about to pass her.

“General Hugs!”

 _Kriff_. She had used the name they used for him in the Resistance. She tried to quickly correct herself and get to her point, hoping that he had not noticed or that he would quickly forget.

“General Hux, may I have your attention?”

Reluctantly, Ren and Hux stopped and looker her way down their noses. Neither said anything but she took their silence as a permission to speak.

“The controls of that command shuttle over there are overridden. In the case of a mission, any subordinate ship could take control over it. I already asked help from my supervisor but we were unable to fix it. Will you come to have a look?”

“This is ridiculous.” Ren turned to Hux. “Send a Lieutenant to check that shuttle. You and me need to plan the next raid, _urgently_.”

Rose’s blood was about to start boiling. She bore a bottomless hatred towards the Supreme Leader of the organisation that had taken away everything from her. Maybe she would change her mind one day, after Rey had had her way with him. But so far, Rey had told her that Ren had had every chance to change after killing Snoke, and that he had even said that he wanted to. But he had done nothing different. Here he still was, preparing for raids in new peaceful worlds.

But she swallowed her defiance, which would not fit this role that she would still have to play for a little while. Instead, she thought about him in her bed, as close to her as Rey had pointed, close enough to feel his breath, his smell and the temperature of his body, had they just been existing for each other. That image made her shudder with fear, which she did not hide, as it was most probably the appropriate reaction.

“Bu-but, Supreme Leader, the raid cannot be done without a functioning command shuttle.” She turned back to the General. “Will you help me fix it? Please?”

Out of a sudden instinct, she fluttered her lashes a few times.

“Yes, of course.” A hint of a smile trickled around Hux’s eyes even though most of his face stayed serious. “What’s your name?”

“Mandi.”

“What!?” Ren raised his voice. “You’re not serious! This can wait. The next raid can use any other command shuttle. General Hux, be careful not to let your personal interests interfere with my orders.”

But he only provoked Hux to stand his ground even more firmly.

“No, I won’t accept this severe malfunction in my fleet.”

“ _Your_ fleet?”

“Yes, my fleet. I want every ship in top condition, ready for mission at all times. That’s why we've recruited so many competent mechanics, as Mandi here undoubtedly is. I’ll help her and attend to our plan later.”

Rose flashed Hux a heart-filled smile, which sealed it: he did not listen to Ren’s response but followed her to the malfunctioning command shuttle.

After examining the error message for a while, he pointed at the panel that Rose had just closed a while ago.

“The signal connections are behind there. Have you checked if everything is correctly connected?”

“Oh, no, I haven’t. Should have thought about it… Thank you!”

She reopened the panel and adjusted the connections back to normal. The error message disappeared and the ship’s own controls lit up.

“Phew, great! I was so worried that this would endanger the next mission. I cannot thank you enough, General.”

A flattered smile conquered Hux’s whole face.

“No problem. This is just my job. I should be thankful to you, for all your efforts for the cause.”

“Wow. Thank you…” She glanced bashfully down and tucked her hair behind her ear, from where it automatically bounced back on her cheek. “Sorry… Doing talking with Generals is not my forte. Doing... Doing talking, yeah...”

“Breathe.”

They both laughed. The movement caused a few strands of Hux's organised hair jump out of place. Rose could not help wondering how he would look like with his whole hair equally tousled. She took an exaggerated breath before saying:

“Oh, before I forget to ask, would you mind using your clearance code to get us briefly out to fly once around this star destroyer? Just to check that everything is working alright now.”

“Sure.”

He punched in his code and the stormtrooper in the pilot seat flew them out of the hangar. Only when they arced not around the star destroyer but away from it did he ask him:

“What exactly are you doing?”

Just before jumping to lightspeed, Poe took off his helmet, shook his hair loose and said:

“Good to see you again, Hugs.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Surrender or I’ll kiss him.”

“This is Poe Dameron of the Resistance. I’m holding for Kylo Ren.”

He had already repeated it five times. Kylo knew that this could not be anything good. He had not seen Hux after he stubbornly disappeared to help the mechanic with an insignificant broken command shuttle. He suspected that Dameron’s persistent comming was related to that incident – in a bad way.

“Shall I let him through?” the new comm volunteer asked.

“No.”

There was silence for a while in the other end. Kylo relaxed a notch, entertaining the possibility that Dameron may have given up. But the next time, the request came in a different voice:

“This is Rey of the Resistance. I’m holding for Kylo Ren.”

It was the voice that could make him take the worst decisions. The voice from which he could not deny anything.

“Let her through.”

Rey’s holoprojection appeared in the middle of the command deck. She was standing behind the figure of General Hux who was tied into a chair. Rey held her lightsaber across his throat in front of him.

“We’ve got him. It’s over for you. Your game is done. The galaxy is against you and will throw you out, right now. Surrender, or I’ll kill him.”

Rey wore her fiercest look, but a hint of surprise disturbed it when Kylo laughed.

“Do you think we’d be intimidated by losing one General? We have a dozen Commanders in line ready to take his place. Go ahead, I don’t blame you for killing him. I’ve had moments of wanting to do the same.”

Rey’s mind was racing. Rose and Poe had risked their lives for getting this hostage. This could not end by Kylo not even blinking an eye at losing him. Had Rose been unlucky and happened to capture the officer whom he personally hated the most? They had known that he could be ruthless with his subordinates but would have believed that the Generals at least held a strategic importance even to him.

At least they should. He was clearly lacking the stability that professional military leaders could bring to his organisation. Maybe it would be a wise move to kill Hux, or at least keep him captive to make the First Order weaker. But there was a high chance that Kylo told the truth about all the candidates to take his place.

They stared at each other’s holos in silence. They had done this many times, though never through a comm device, as they had their own, which could bring them together in flesh instead of a translucent projection. But after Crait (which already seemed like an eternity ago), the only time they had both seen each other had ended up in the argument with Rose involved. Since then, Rey had not seen Kylo, just felt his presence at night through her wall.

She had played with the idea of telling him that her roommate was gone and he could push his bed back to its place, and while at it, maybe also to the side to align it with Rey’s. But all this time, she had settled for only imagining it.

She was still mad at him for all the nights spent with Rose, no matter how little logical reason there was for it. But now, tuning into all her mindless anger made her consider the possibility of him feeling the same. She extinguished the lightsaber, clipped it down to her belt and laid her hands on Hux’s shoulders.

“I’ll kiss him.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Surrender or I’ll kiss him.”

“No, Rey, kriff, you’re not serious. Stop it!”

He kept repeating it as Rey lowered her head to Hux’s level and turned to kiss first his cheek, then tracing her way towards the corner of his mouth. As long as Hux could speak, he kept trying to make his Supreme Leader listen:

“Focus, Ren, you can’t surrender for this! Not after everything we’ve sacrificed for the cause. Don’t let your personal interests interfere! You’ve…”

Rey’s mouth forced him to stop. Kylo broke into a continuous wordless shout. Rey turned their heads for him to see better and noticed from the corner of her eye how his head was turning, lightsaber rising and falling, people running in the background to take cover, and a variety of shards and splinters flying around. She stopped briefly to ask:

“Do you surrender?”

Kylo stopped to meet her gaze, panting but not saying anything. She dived back to another kiss, which brought out more shouting and eventually just repeating:

“Stop, Rey, stop it!”

After he noticed that it did nothing to stop her, he reverted to:

“We surrender.”

Rey let instantly go of Hux and smiled and Kylo’s wretched holo.  
  


* * *

  
Only a handful of senators had been outside of the Hosnian system when it was destroyed. Leia had figured out that they could be considered eligible to sign the peace treaty on behalf of the New Republic. Herself, she wanted to stay out of it to avoid provocation and make her own peace with her son later.

They had brought General Hux to Coruscant and invited rest of the First Order leadership to join them there. Now, they were waiting for them in a conference room, the small delegation of the Resistance working on keeping the senators feeling protected and entertained. Rose was terribly nervous about talking with them, but Poe recounted several stories, as they were politely interested in how the Resistance had managed to stand against the full power of the First Order.

But the most curious the senators were about how the Resistance, being the weakest it had ever been since its early days, had pulled off getting the First Order to surrender. Questions about that made everyone’s eyes turn to Rey, who described everything with a blush on her face, avoiding details and highlighting the heroic parts of Rose and Poe.

When Rey had to answer for the fourth time a version of ‘did you really make him surrender by kissing his General?’, the First Order delegation finally appeared. The youngest senator already eyed at his chrono.

“Welcome. I guess we can get started then. The documents to sign are here…”

But Kylo Ren did not even sit down. He walked straight around the table, all the way to Rey and grasped her shoulder with his other hand, her neck with his other one and kissed her. He made everyone wait and watch as he bent her backwards and examined her whole mouth with his tongue.

He had intended to make it as long as she had kissed Hux, but neither of them quite felt like stopping there. Seeing how impatient the young senator was getting, Poe cleared his throat to break the silence:

“Errr, how about you two get a room _after_ we’re done with this?”

They paused, still looking at each other, seemingly oblivious to the audience around. The senator started again:

“So all the documents are here…”

Kylo sat down on Rey’s seat, pulled her down to his lap and looked at the senator.

“Show me where to sign.”

He browsed the datapad passed to him, his other hand occupied around Rey's waist.

“Too long. Just explain to me what is there and I’ll sign.”

In a monotonous voice, an older senator recapped how the First Order commits to never again oppose the New Republic or any sovereign world in arms, stop slavery and child labour in all their forms and a long list of other conditions. Kylo stared blankly at the pad in silence until she finished.

“Anything else?”

The senator shook her head and Kylo signed, after him the First Order Generals and finally the senators. Smiling victoriously, Poe waved at a droid in the corner:

“R2, now the drinks!”

R2-D2 rolled around the room with a tray of glasses with sparkling contents. Everyone grabbed one and raised them.

Like following a silent agreement, Kylo and Rey emptied their glasses in one gulp and exited out of the door. They left behind a momentarily awkward atmosphere, until Poe recovered himself.

“Oh, looks like they did what I suggested, even faster than I thought. But no big deal, that means more drinks for us.”

He resumed entertaining the senators in a loud voice, and Hux used the opportunity to toast his glass with Rose’s.

“So, Mandi, what are you up to, now that the war is done?”

“Rose, my real name is Rose.”

“Ah, I see, Rose…” Something about his face melted when he tasted the sound of the name on his tongue. “So what’s your plan, Rose?”

“I don’t know, really. I’ve lost everything to the First Order. All I had was the Resistance and now that’s about to be gone, too. How about you?”

“I’m going back to Arkanis.”

“Your homeworld?”

“Yes. It’s beautiful. Plenty of wetland agriculture, fresh air, and some of the most impressive urban tech in the galaxy, mainly for rain and moisture management. It rains almost every day but you don’t even notice it in the cities. Speaking of Arkanis, it has plenty of excellent job opportunities for a mechanic. Even for an engineer.”

“You mean…?”

Rose pointed at her own chest and Hux nodded.

“Engineer? But I… I have no education. Just what I’ve learned in the mines and with the Resistance.”

“There are outstanding schools as well. You’d for sure get in and probably even skip a semester ahead with your track record. What you did back there, to the signal connections of the command shuttle, was quite impressive. I can write you an endorsement if you need.”

“Oh, thanks… That would be kind of you. But to start with, could I, perhaps, get a lift?”

She did not have to flutter or plead this time. When she just looked in his eyes, he knew that she could ask anything and he would lay it at her feet. Before he could hold himself back, he blurted out:

"Of course. Anything for you, Rose."

"Anything? In that case..."

She reached out a hand, straight into his hair and shuffled it in all directions. _Much better_. Examining the result made her lean forward and slightly part her lips as he leaned down towards her, until...

They were alerted by a crash when something flew against the wall next to them from the other side. Rose got instantly worried about Rey and rushed out with Hux on her tail. They stopped to listen by the door of the neighbouring room.

From inside, they heard the sounds of loud, passionate, almost animal-like arguing. More objects got crashed against the floor and the walls.

“We have to go in”, Rose said.

But Hux grasped gently her wrist before she could reach the door handle.

“They’re fine. If I know Kylo Ren at all, he’s just… proposing.”


End file.
